"'Cause you know," Rand went on, "they get somebody like me done time, next thing it's how'd he know where to look? He must have been part of it. You understand what I'm sayin'?"

"I do."

A brusque nod. "Least not till they doin' the reward, when it's over."

"I hear you."

"Okay, then." And they both reached for the door openers.

As soon as they got out of the car, Hunt could smell rotting vegetation and gas. And he noticed that all along the opposite sh.o.r.e, the degraded sh.o.r.eline had been fenced off, no doubt in preparation for the improvements, the new rock-and-concrete wall.

Cecil Rand came around and led him across the street, then down across the gra.s.sy lawn to the old retaining wall. They were still quite a ways from the water-hugging trees that marked the exact site where Como had been found, but Rand didn't seem to know or care about that, and stopped perhaps fifty yards short of it, and on the street side.

"Okay, now," Rand said as they stood looking out over the mud. The sky today was heavily overcast and the gray morning light flat and without glare. "Now, I ain't saying this is absolutely somethin', it's just what it is."

"All right," Hunt said. "What are we looking at?"

Rand moved in closer next to Hunt and pointed slightly off to his right. "I was walking by here last night before dark and stopped right here. Seen it and started thinkin' on the reward. Put my stogie out here to mark the spot, so I'd get it right."

Hunt looked down and saw the carbon X on the low wall. Then his eyes came up, following where Rand was pointing.

"Just this side of the last of the water," Rand said. "It's still there."

"What, though?" And then Hunt squinted. Maybe ninety feet away from where he stood, and still ten feet on this side of the puddle, the smooth flat surface of the mud yielded an instantly recognizable shape, out of place among the smattering of roots and bottles and rotting algae. It looked like two sticks crossed at perfect right angles, but Hunt knew what it was even as he said, "I see it. You mean the tire iron?"

Rand was nodding and nodding, the corners of his mouth turned up in satisfaction. "I'm seein' that ol' thing in the mud last night and thinkin' I be lookin' at what got used on Dominic."

14.

The headquarters for the Mission Street Coalition's moving company occupied two large warehouses and an office that was little more than a shed in the light industrial neighborhood a couple of blocks off Cesar Chavez Boulevard between the 101 and 280 freeways.

Mickey, clueless, drove out to the Coalition's residential home on Dolores, got there at about nine-thirty, then asked around and at the desk for Damien Jones. The administrative bureaucracy at the home wasn't the most organized system Mickey had ever encountered, and it took him nearly a half hour to hunt down Damien's likely whereabouts, and he only succeeded then because, inadvertently, he had run into the executive director of the program, Jaime Sanchez, and his wife, Lola.

Identifying himself for what he was, an a.s.sociate with the Hunt Club, Mickey had explained that Mr. Jones had called the reward hotline number at the office yesterday and apparently had some information relating to the murder of Dominic Como. This seemed to surprise and slightly displease both of the Sanchezes. They couldn't imagine what that might be or why Damien hadn't told them first. But nevertheless Mr. Sanchez directed Mickey to the moving company's headquarters, where he arrived at ten-twenty only to discover that Mr. Jones was out with a moving crew on a job at Forty- second Avenue, almost to the beach, and a good half hour's drive, or more, from headquarters.

Before he started that drive, though, Mickey took a frustration break and called his sister at the office, giving her the play-by-play of his morning so far, which had produced nothing at all even in the limited realm of eliminating spurious claims to the reward money. "So now I'm off to Forty-second Avenue! Forty-second Avenue! That's like five blocks before you leave the continent, do you realize that? The way this morning's going I'm not even going to lay eyes on this Jones guy until noon, and that's if he's not on his lunch break someplace else. And all for what? So I can get to meet another Blimp Lady, except this guy's a guy? This is dumb. Isn't there somebody else I can check out? Did that girl ever call back? I can check out Damien Jones when he comes back home tonight, if he does. If his name's even Jones, which now that I think about it, it probably isn't. Well?"

"Well, what, Mick? Did you ask me a question?"

"I bet I asked you a hundred in there."

"Try one again. One."

"Okay. Have we gotten any new calls?"

"Yes."

"Great. Who? Hang-up Lady?"

"Not her. Not yet. But actually, we've gotten three more. The bad news being that they all sound to me like Wyatt's going to give them to you. If I had to bet."

"Are they closer than Damien Jones? I mean physically closer? Maybe I can see one of them on the way out to see him. Or all of them."

"I think maybe you should wait until Wyatt decides, don't you?"

His sister's voice of calm reason finally made an impact. Mickey let out a deep sigh into the telephone and said, "Probably." He took another breath. "Speaking of which, you get any word from him?"

"As a matter of fact, I have. The guy he met this morning? He thinks he might have come up with the murder weapon."

"Yes!" News of success on any front pumped Mickey right up. "What is it?"

"A tire iron they found in the lagoon. He's called Devin and they should be over there by now."

"That is so great," Mickey said. "Do you think this reward thing might actually work, Sis? Would that be cool, or what?"

"Very cool, Mickey, very cool. But let's just see what happens. See if the tire iron . . . I mean if they can tell. And then where it leads, if anywhere. But at least it's something. Some real evidence. Maybe."

"Okay," Mickey said.

"Okay, what?"

"Okay, I'm motivated again. We'll keep doing it this way. Meanwhile, what are you doing for lunch?"

She hesitated. "I haven't really thought about it. I had a huge breakfast, you know, this morning."

"I remember. But they've got this new theory where you can eat two, or even three, meals in one day, and it won't kill you. In fact, it might even be good for you."

"Don't worry. I'll get something," she said.

"You'd better. There'll be a quiz on what it was when I get back."

Damien Jones, at long last.

Mickey got the strong impression that Damien's boss wasn't happy to give him time off for this interview, but Mickey had told him the half-truth that Mr. Sanchez had directed him how to find Mr. Jones, intimating that the big boss himself wanted the interview to proceed.

Now Mickey and Damien had walked a few houses down the street from the move-in job site and were sitting on concrete steps leading up to one of the other houses. Out here, the gray cloud cover was thick, but high enough that it wasn't quite fog. In spite of that, every few minutes, the deep ba.s.s of a foghorn punctuated the early afternoon stillness.

Since Mr. Jones had called with information that seemed to have at least an oblique relevance to the investigation, Mickey found that he had to summon all of his patience as it quickly became obvious that Damien was under the influence of some kind of controlled substance. During the first few questions, trying to establish a rapport with the young workman, it wasn't even obvious that Damien remembered the substance of his call to the Hunt Club the previous night.

So Mickey gently prodded. "You said something about the fact that the foundation was supposed to pay for your room and board, but now you were paying. And it wasn't fair."

"Right. Right."

"And that Mr. Como didn't do the same thing at his place. The Sunset Youth Project."

"Okay."

"Okay. And that this somehow had something to do with his murder."

Damien sat on the step with his elbows on his knees, staring straight in front of him, to all appearances stumped. After a minute, he laughed softly to himself, hung his head, and shook it. "Seemed like I had it all worked out last night, but that wasn't exactly it, what you just said."

Mickey nodded, all understanding. Although he knew that if this was all he was going to get after the four hours he'd spent tracking this bozo down, he'd be sorely tempted to kill him. Still, he reined himself in and managed to sound sincere. "That's all right," he said.

"But that don't mean it isn't true."

Mickey wasn't clear what antecedent Damien was referring to here and, in fact, was reasonably sure that Damien couldn't identify it himself. But all he said was, "No, I know."

"I mean, it's a racket, you know."

"What is?"

"The whole, you know, the rehab thing."

"A racket?"

"Yeah."

"How's that?"

"Well." Damien looked up the street, making sure he was still out of earshot. The foghorn sounded, and he continued. "You know, they collecting money from the foundations. Big money."

Suddenly Mickey felt a chill raise the hairs on his arms. Unbidden, the discussion he'd had with Alicia Thorpe the other day about the Sunset Youth Project's funding from the city and from other foundations came back to him in sharp detail, particularly her disclosure that the city's Health Services Department was the biggest single line item in the city's budget. And now here was Mr. Jones, no relation to Mr. Einstein, referring to the same thing. Which didn't necessarily mean anything, except for the rather salient fact that Mr. Jones, addled as he might be or might have been last night, somehow was introducing this funding issue into a discussion about Dominic Como's murder.

And now, it seemed, Jones had found a scent. And it was Mickey's job to keep him on it. "Right," he said. "So the Mission Street Coalition gets money from the city. So what?"

"So what is they s'posed to use that to keep up the program. But it don't go to no program."

"So where's it go, Damien?"

"Now, that I wish I knew." He clucked in disappointment. "But, oh, yeah, this what I was sayin'. The whole thing is, they get me, 'stead of jail, into the program here, okay?"

"Right."

"Okay, the thing is, they ain't no program to the program. You know what I'm sayin'?"

Thinking, Patience, young Jedi, Mickey said, "Not exactly. Maybe you can tell me."

"Okay, here's the thing. We here for the rehab, you know. Otherwise, we maybe in jail, right? Right. So we get here, ain't n.o.body doin' that twelve-step shuffle, ain't n.o.body urine testing, we just come in and say, 'No, we ain't doin' no s.h.i.t,' and sign this form, and then we done. Except they make us work."

Getting a little wound up now, Damien Jones's expressive face went into a deep frown. "Hey! Look at me, now. Whatchu think I been doin' all day 'cept humping these loads? And the company, the Coalition, they chargin' the same as like Bekins, you know, the moving people. And they s'posedly payin' us fair, but we don't never get to see no money. See what I'm sayin'? That's the money goes for rent and food, my money. Not no foundation money. So where's all that foundation money go? That's what I want to know. So bottom line is they got me workin' for a year, payin' all the bills here, and meanwhile I don't do every little thing they ask, I'm out of the program and back in jail. You want to know the truth, they got theirselves a bunch a slaves workin' here, nothin' less, and I'm one of 'em. And that ain't right."

"No, it isn't," Mickey said. "And I'm glad you decided to tell me about all this. But you called last night originally about the reward, and I'm afraid if this doesn't have anything to do with the murder of Dominic Como . . . well, you know what I'm saying, don't you?"

For a long minute, Mickey thought he'd lost Damien for good. The faraway stare came back, the exhausted elbows-on-his-knees posture. Methodically, he bobbed his head as though listening to his own private soundtrack. Then, when at last he spoke, Mickey could barely hear him. "You know them Battalion people out there?"

Again, one of Alicia's references, "sort of an urban Peace Corps," and Mickey snapped back to full attention. "What about them?"

"Well, brothers I know in there, they gettin' paid, all right, and they don't do no real work, so I'm thinkin' how's that happen and how do I get some of that?"

"What do you mean, they don't do work?"

Damien rolled his eyes, explaining the obvious. "I mean work like I'm doing. Humpin' loads, cleanin' up, sweepin', kitchen work, like that."

"So what do they do?"

"Whatever Dominic Como says."

"Ah." The explanation didn't really turn any light on for Mickey, but now at least Como was overtly in the conversation. Now the trick was to keep him there. "So you're saying what, exactly?"

"Well, first, I want to get me some of that."

"That might be a little difficult, Damien, since Como's dead now."

"Okay, yeah, okay. But I'm talking if . . ." Here his eyes brightened, his whole demeanor perked up, and he snapped his fingers. "Here it is! Here it is! Thinkin' on the reward now, what I got last night!"

"Hit me."

"Okay, I'm in that Battalion, right. Like the most I got to do is wash a car or pa.s.s out some pamphlets or answer some phones, some s.h.i.t like that, basically nothing, you with me?"

"So far."

"So say I f.u.c.k up a little, maybe go off the rehab, something small-maybe a doob or a beer one time. You know they test out there, not like here. Anyway, who knows why, I get on Como's bad side and now he's tellin' me I'm done with the Battalion, I'm back in the s.h.i.t, workin' like I'm doin' here. Or say, even better, I'm close to done with my time, and he says he's gonna violate me back to jail, out of the program. See what I'm sayin' now?"

"Still not completely, I'm afraid."

"Hey, he kicks me out now, I am f.u.c.ked. I can't let that happen. I got to stop him before, you know?"

"So you kill him?"

Damien Jones threw his hands up in celebration, flashed Mickey his brightest smile. "Now you got it. That's what I'm talkin' about." He kept nodding as though making sure that the strands of his argument, if that's what it was, held together. "That's what I'm talkin' about." Now he looked straight at Mickey. "That's where you look, at them Battalion people. It's one of them, hallelujah, and you know where to find me."

Suddenly and thoroughly deflated, Mickey all at once came to the full-blown realization that in spite of Damien's enthusiastic narrative, he was in his own way another variant on the Blimp Lady. If not nuts, then certainly and fundamentally unhelpful.

By now just about completely baffled by trying to fathom the solution that Damien had apparently reached and was sharing with him, Mickey leaned in toward the young man. "And, just so I'm sure I understand, Damien, you're saying you think Mr. Como's killer is one of these Battalion people?"

"I'm saying you look there I bet you gonna be happy you did."

"And if we do, after that, why exactly do we need to find you, then?"

Damien straightened his back, put on a look of surprised indignation. "What we been talkin' 'bout all this time? First, I get his place in the Battalion out there, the killer's, and second, 'cause then you got to give me that reward."